Abounding Grace

Pastor Ed Taylor: Finders are not keepers, because God doesn’t want the losers to be weepers. Why don't you write that one down? That sounds like a bumper sticker, but that's what the Lord says. If you find something, give it back. It's not yours. Do everything you can to restore to someone, even your enemy—help their animal. It's a heart issue. Each one of them, they reveal our hearts.

Guest (Male): Welcome to another Abounding Grace online at aboundinggraceradio.com, the radio ministry of Calvary Church in Aurora, Colorado. And right now, our Bible teacher, Ed Taylor, is leading a study in Exodus. We'll be in chapter 23 today, a passage that speaks volumes about putting God first and following the Lord closely. Here's Pastor Ed with today's message.

Pastor Ed Taylor: I just learned today we received a voicemail looking for a Bible study to be forwarded. It was a mom. A mom called in, left a voicemail in our media department asking for a Bible study to be sent to her and forwarded to her. It was a mom of a prisoner, headed to go visit her son in prison down south.

And so it was shared with me because we’re still knocking on doors to see if God will open, get us a station down there for all the prisons, and it just keeps coming up, and we keep knocking. We’ll see what the Lord has. But it was interesting because I was thinking, "How do you think that mom feels visiting her son in prison?" I mean, that’s a very special—that’s no ordinary prisoner. That’s no ordinary person. That’s her boy. And all the hopes and dreams and love and care that she has for her boy.

And what does the Bible say? "Remember the prisoners like you’re with them." Or I would even add this illustration, as this mom was like, "You know what? I want to bring the Word of God to my boy in jail." Remember them like they’re your mother, or your father, or your brother.

That's what he's telling the nation: be merciful and kind and fair. It's not all about you. It never has been. Don't forget, even though we're just days from the deliverance in Egypt, don't you ever forget Egypt. You don't have to live there, and you don't have to condemn yourself, and you don't have to beat yourself up. That's not what he's saying.

But he says, "Remember what I delivered you from, because it will burst forth in your heart a place of worship, and you'll remember the suffering as well. And you'll remember people that are maybe a few steps behind, or a few years behind, or a few thoughts behind, or a few decisions behind where you are." Don't forget, because you were strangers. Use your testimony as a way to remember what God has done in your life.

Notice verse 10: "Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and with your olive grove. Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest, that your ox and your donkey may rest, and that the son of your female servant and the stranger may be refreshed. And in all that I have said to you, be circumspect and make no mention of the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth."

Six and one, that's the pattern. Six and one. So even with your land, give it rest. With your animals, give them rest. With those that work with you, the strangers, let them be refreshed. Now you'll notice throughout the Bible as we'll study through that there are many Sabbaths. Many Sabbaths.

The Sabbath day gave a man a day of rest every week, and now the land gets it, the animals get it, and the farmers will tell you that it's good to rest the land and to give it a rest before you till it again and plant again. There was the Sabbath day, there was the Sabbath year, and then we learn in Leviticus there's the Jubilee year. There was the Year of Jubilee where possessions were returned, and slaves were set free, and there was great rejoicing.

We’re not going to cover it in depth today, but remember, there are those that would come alongside of you and try to impose upon you the Sabbath as a way of the only day that you can worship God. And I've taught this in much depth. You can go on the website or on the app and just put the word "Sabbath" in, and I've taught in depth on this.

This is not an obligation when you run into folks that will condemn you for what day you worship. Even to some degree, they may condemn you for worshiping on Sunday and say that you're worshiping the mark of the beast. It's not true. You don't need to be afraid, or you don't need to be stumbled by that, although it probably is a little intimidating. Some stranger comes up, "What day do you worship?" "I worship on Sunday." "You're worshiping the mark of the beast!" I'm like, "Bro, I'm just trying to get my French fries. I don't know what you're doing. Why are you sharing this?"

So I've done a Bible study in depth if that's a question. But if in depth is not what you need, let me give you two verses. If that's all that will settle your heart tonight on this topic, let me give you two. Romans chapter 14. Let's turn there. Go ahead, hold your place in Exodus. Let's turn over to Romans chapter 14 so you can see it in your own Bible or flip over on your app.

Romans 14, notice with me verse five. You might want to mark it and circle it, maybe even write in the column there in the margin "Sabbath," just so you can automatically remind you that's what it's helping you with. Verse five of chapter 14: "One person esteems one day above another; another esteems every day alike. Let each be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it to the Lord; and he who does not observe the day, to the Lord he does not observe it. He who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives God thanks."

Why? Verse seven: "For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord." So no matter what day you worship: you worship on Monday, it’s unto the Lord. You sleep in on Tuesday, it’s unto the Lord. You go out and shovel on Wednesday—oh, that was today, wasn't it? You go out and shovel today, it's unto the Lord. You come to Bible study, it's unto the Lord.

If you choose to say, "Hey, the most important day for me is Sunday, the first day of the week, as it is given in the scriptures," great! It’s unto the Lord. You want to worship on Saturday? We have a Saturday service. You’re more than welcome to join us. You can worship on Saturday. But the key is: be fully convinced and make sure you're doing it unto the Lord.

Then Colossians chapter 2 verse 16 is the next one. If you want to turn there, you'll be really close, Romans to Colossians. Colossians 2 verse 16: "So let no one judge you in food or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbaths," plural, "which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ."

So today by faith in Jesus Christ, you keep the Sabbath every day, every moment of every day, because he is our Sabbath, and we fully rest on him. But again, I developed it much deeper if you need a deeper answer. I went through, but notice here, he says there are many different Sabbaths in the scripture, not just the day of rest. It's important to rest.

Verse 14: "Three times you shall keep a feast to me in the year: you shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before me empty); and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field. Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread; nor shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until morning. The first of the firstfruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk."

Much of the worship of the children of Israel was festive. It still is today. Festivals and feasts prescribed for the nation were three primary feasts. First, there's the Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And remember, they took the lamb, and they removed the leaven and took the blood and put it on the doorsteps. It was a quick meal, keeping them ready to go. The lamb fed between 10 to 20 people, and it was a reminder of God's great deliverance. But it was also a pointing to the Lamb of God that would take away the sins of the world. You would see this; it was point forward to the coming of the Lord.

And notice in verse 15 it says, "Don't anyone come empty." Do you see that? "None shall appear before me empty." That's interesting. They were to bring some kind of offering as an expression of thanksgiving for all that the Lord has done. This is how I believe this can be applied to today. Certainly, it can be applied in a practical sense if you want to spread your giving out of some sort or something like that.

But I see a more deeper spiritual principle, and it's this: when we gather together, don't come with the expectation of what can be done for you alone. For example, "I'm going to church because I want to be fed the Word of God." Good, you will be. "And I want to go to church because I want to sing, or I want to be with someone, or I want to meet someone, or we're going to pray together."

Whatever, you have this gathering where, "I'm here for something, I'm here for something, I'm here for something." But God says, "No, when you show up, don't come empty. Come ready to give. Bring something to give when you gather." That's the principle here. Bring something to give, and the greatest thing you give is yourself to the Lord. Number one.

Come with the right heart. Give your heart to the Lord. Give your voice to the Lord. Give your time to the Lord. Give your attention to the Lord. There's so many things and so many ways that you and I can remember to not come here empty, but to step into what the Lord is wanting us—don't come empty. Mark that. None of us shall appear empty.

And for them, it was very practical because everything they had in the land, everything they were given was an addition from the Lord. Everything, all of it. It was all from the Lord. They had nothing except what they plundered from the Egyptians. Everything was from the Lord, and they were to remember where it came from.

Matthew Henry says this in his commentary, and I quote: "Some freewill offering or other they must bring in a token of their respect and gratitude to their great benefactor. And as they were not allowed to come empty-handed, so we must not come to worship God empty-hearted." I like that. We're not to come and worship empty-hearted. Our souls must be filled with grace, with pious and devout affections, holy desires toward him, and dedications of ourselves to him, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.

And he says, "Don't come empty-handed." Then he has the Feast of Harvest in verse 16, also known as the Feast of Pentecost. This was to take place 50 days after the first sheaf of the barley harvest was taken. And this is how they lived in rhythm. The rhythms of their lives were set in worship of God.

Another great application: that the rhythms of our lives would be set by the worship of God. That we would set our lives around worship rather than around other things. Because we know what it's like to set our lives up around things, and around events, and around situations. We plan it out, we think it out.

What God is saying is, "Put me first. Let the rhythm of your life be surrounding me." In very small ways, that's our worship services. You get involved in a smaller group, you make a commitment to someone, you serve. Let your life surround.

And as you get deeper into the scriptures, you see these feasts, and we will as well, pointing toward Jesus Christ and the significance of their importance. The next one was the Feast of Ingathering, which is also known as the Feast of Tabernacles. Verse 17 prescribes this three times a year all your males shall come. Three times a year.

It's repeated for us again in Deuteronomy chapter 16. And here's the thing: this is a command, these three feasts. And it reminds us today that worship is not optional. Worship is not optional. The gathering together is not optional. We see that even in Hebrews repeated: "Do not neglect the gathering, don't forsake the gathering together."

Worship is not optional. Sometimes I think we have on our minds that worship of God is optional. Gathering together is optional. Coming with something is optional. It's just all—we have such an emphasis in our culture: choice, choice, choice, choice, choice, choice. We begin to think that it's all us, when God has prescribed for us what will be a blessing in our lives.

He's prescribed for us: if we will follow him, we will experience the blessing of abiding in him and trusting him with our lives. Let's drill it down, let's take it down a notch just to something simple, like singing. Some of you think singing is optional. And we'll even say that: "If you want to sing, you can. You want to hum, you can. You can make a joyful noise." And that can be easily interpreted of, "I'll just skip that song part of church. I'll just skip that song part. I'll just come in late, leave early."

It’s something I understand because that was my approach early on as a new believer. That part of the gathering didn't mean much to me. Even Bible study didn't mean much to me because I didn't know the Lord well. And the more I learned about the Lord, the more I wanted to express myself. The less I thought about how I sound.

"Well, you know, if I sing, what’s the person in front of me—" Well, I mean, they'll probably move next time, I don't know. But it doesn't matter. And you come in, and certainly there are those days when you're heavy-hearted and songs don't come. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about that thought of "optional."

Or instead of the option of worship is, "You know, I've got options. I can sing or I can criticize. Oh, I think I'll just criticize today. Don't like that song, don't like that song, don't like that song." Well, let me speak to the critics just for a moment. Did you know something? We're not singing to you, or for you. So it really doesn't matter what you think.

But while you're criticizing, you're not worshiping. And that matters. That really matters. We have elevated our preferences to a place where God says, "I want you to do this three times a year. I want you to do this. I want you to sing to me. I want you to pray together. I want you to take communion. I want you to read my word. I want you—"

These are not options. Now of course we kind of pull back from them because we don't want to make them legalistic and now you measure your life by that. But you know in a relationship, you don't think like that. In a relationship of love, you do not have a list of things to follow. You just do. You just are.

Through trial and error you might find a few mistakes along the way, but you're not looking to, "Okay, what do I need to do? What do I need to do today?" What do you mean, "what do you need to do?" You get to do what you want to do because you're in the Lord. So you wake up and you go, "I don't—what do I need to do today?" No, I'm just like, "My word, where's my word? Before I even have my coffee, where's my word? I want to hear what the Lord has to say. I want to catch up on my Bible reading as I get behind at times."

I just want to seek the Lord. I don't want to be in a place where—and we kind of take this approach here as well as we mentioned with the huddle, and we don't make it mandatory even though it really is. We want you to be there because we want you to be there. That's why. We want you to be there. We want you to want to be there, because this is the church where your gifts are being lived out when we have a gathering like that.

To make it mandatory, I guess we could, but then most people that want to be there, mandatory doesn't mean anything. And then the mandatory part just makes people get hard hearts. "I don't want to be here anyway." Well, if you don't want to be here, don't be here. But then don't serve here either. If you don't have a heart to serve, it's all heart of the matter.

I didn't—that might be for someone here. Но the reality of this sense of your heart: we can't come into a place of criticism. We can't come into a place where "I'll take it or leave it." Worship in our devotional lives: it's not optional. Worship in our church family: that's not optional. Worship with our kids—and now I'm not just speaking about song, but just a life of worship. A place where the room here is a sanctuary, but so is your home, so is your bedroom, so is your car, so is your cubicle. There's a place of refuge because God is in that place.

And how is God in that place? Well, primarily through you. Inhabiting you. So that wherever you go, wherever the soles of your feet touch, God says, "I've given that to you. I've given that to you." Worship is not optional. Every Jewish head of household that lived within 15 miles around Jerusalem had to be there.

They had to get ready for the feast, and the roads were fixed, and the holes were repaired, and they would whitewash the tombs all along the way. Even Jesus, remember when he rebuked the scribes and Pharisees, used the whitewashed tombs as an example because they would clean things up to make things look good on the outside as everyone would be on their way to worship.

And then finally, we're only going to get to verse 19 today, it says at the very end, which is unusual: "You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk." You know what that's become today? If you go to Israel with us, what that's become today is you can't eat meat with dairy. And that's how they approach that.

So in the morning, I forget which one it is: in the morning you get real butter, and at night you get margarine. That's how it works. And they're very—all the hotels we stay in are very strong on this kosher regulation. And that's not what it means at all. The idea was that their thinking is because you're eating them both, they would be both in your body, and you would by digesting them as both, and that way you can't eat them together because then you would be boiling a kid. That's not what it means at all.

God was telling the nation not to follow the pagan rituals of the land, which included this practice. That's all it is. He wasn't giving them a dietary instruction that would follow thousands of years later of figuring out something that's in your stomach boiling together. He's just like, "Look, the pagans do this, you're different than the pagans. Don't do it."

Sometimes there are those things that God tells us to do where you don't need an explanation, you just need to do it. You don't need to have, "Hey, well, why? And why? And why?" Kids do that. "Why? Why? Why?" Well, eventually it's like, "Just trust me." Now you may not be so kind; you may say "Because I said so," but what you're really saying is, "Just trust me. Even if I explained it to you, you're five years old, you won't understand it. Just trust me. I'm dad right now. Just follow me. I love you, I have what's best for you, and this is one of them. Don't be like the pagans."

So be careful in the word, church. Be careful. Let the plain things—it’s once been said that the plain things are the main things, and the main things are the plain things. So you don't have to go search for some deeper meaning, and you're looking at this and go, "I don't know what this means, but maybe there's some kind of deep—and goat means this, and young means this, and mother means this." And before you know it, you've got some new theology. No, it's a very quick statement and those that have studied before us say, "Okay, boiling a young goat in the mother—that was common with the pagans. Don't do it. It's what they did."

And it grieves my heart at times to hear the extremes of so-called teachers taking passages out of context to lead people astray, which is why we're studying the book of Galatians. That's exactly what they did there. They took things out of context and imposed these heavy burdens on the people when God never—as he gives the direction, he doesn't want us to live our lives under this burden of mandatory, mandatory, mandatory. He wants us to live under the motivation of love, which is the greatest motive of all.

No greater love is than this than one to lay down his life for a friend. Lay down your life, church. Let him lead you and guide you, and follow him close. As the Old Testament has these obscurities involved with them, you can get to the root of it and find in the New Covenant an equivalent. Don't be like the world. Don't follow the majority. If they're headed toward evil, say no. Be an example.

I mean, you can go through each one of these. When you worship, come together and celebrate. Don't forget where you came from. Let it be a motivation to love others and serve others. And by the way, finders are not keepers, because God doesn't want the losers to be weepers. Why don't you write that one down? That sounds like a bumper sticker, but that's what the Lord says. If you find something, give it back. It's not yours. Do everything you can to restore to someone, even your enemy—help their animal. It's a heart issue. Each one of them, they reveal our hearts.

Guest (Male): This is Abounding Grace, and Pastor Ed Taylor is leading a study of Exodus right now. You can hear these radio programs on our website anytime at aboundinggraceradio.com, or listen to us wherever you get your podcasts. Another way to go and grow in the word is by downloading our app. Search for Ed Taylor. This is a great way for you to take in the Word of God wherever you may be.

Do you struggle with anger, as so many do? We'd like to recommend an excellent book on the subject from Tim LaHaye and Bob Phillips. It's titled "Anger is a Choice." Whether you're dealing with the rage of others or battle it yourself, you'll discover how to keep anger under control instead of it being in control. Request a copy today when you give a gift of $25 or more to Abounding Grace. Call 877-30-GRACE. And I should also mention the book is available online at our e-store. Take a look at calvaryco.store, calvaryco.store. Again, the toll-free number: 877-30-GRACE.

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Well, that will do it for today. Come back tomorrow, and Pastor Ed Taylor will pick up where we left off in Exodus here on Abounding Grace.